Things You Thought You Knew – Head in the Clouds

Summary

StarTalk Radio – Episode Summary: "Things You Thought You Knew – Head in the Clouds"

Release Date: April 8, 2025

Welcome to a comprehensive summary of the "StarTalk Radio" episode titled "Things You Thought You Knew – Head in the Clouds." Hosted by renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-host Chuck Nice, this episode delves into the intricacies of twilight, cloud formation, and the profound impacts of climate change on our planet's coastlines. Below is a detailed breakdown of the key discussions, insights, and conclusions drawn during the episode.

---

1. Understanding Twilight

The episode kicks off with Chuck Nice introducing the topic of twilight, specifically focusing on "twilight clouds and coastlines." The conversation swiftly moves into clarifying common misconceptions about twilight phases.

Notable Quote:

Chuck Nice [00:59]: "I've got another things you thought you knew coming your way. This time we're looking at twilight clouds and coastlines, but you gotta check it out to see how they connect and why."

---

2. The Three Types of Twilight

Neil deGrasse Tyson initially mistakes the discussion by referencing phases from the "Twilight" movie series. Chuck correctly redirects the conversation towards the astronomical definitions.

Civil Twilight:

• Occurs when the Sun is up to 6 degrees below the horizon.
• Sufficient sunlight for most outdoor activities without additional lighting.

Nautical Twilight:

• Sun is between 6 and 12 degrees below the horizon.
• Essential for sailors using sextants for navigation by stars.

Astronomical Twilight:

• Sun is between 12 and 18 degrees below the horizon.
• Conditions ideal for astronomers to observe celestial objects without atmospheric interference.

Notable Quotes:

Chuck Nice [05:35]: "A civil twilight is until the sun is six degrees below the horizon."

Neil deGrasse Tyson [09:20]: "So you got your civil, of course, and then your nautical, and then your astronomical."

---

3. Cloud Formation and Atmospheric Phenomena

The discussion transitions into the science of cloud formation, exploring how humidity, temperature gradients, and atmospheric conditions contribute to various cloud types and weather phenomena.

Key Points:

• Humidity and Relative Humidity: Explained as the percentage of moisture the air holds relative to its capacity at a specific temperature.
• Cloud Types:
  • Cumulus Clouds: Puffy and white, formed from rising warm air.
  • Cumulonimbus Clouds: Dense and gray, leading to thunderstorms and hail due to significant updrafts.
  • Cirrus Clouds: High-altitude, wispy clouds that can affect night sky visibility.
• Rainbows: Formation requires specific conditions—rain falling in front of the observer with the sun positioned behind them at a low angle.

Notable Quotes:

Chuck Nice [15:04]: "Water vapor basically. Okay. And boom, you have a cloud. That's why the cloud is up there and not down here."

Neil deGrasse Tyson [25:14]: "That's terrible."

Chuck Nice [27:23]: "So it's gotta be raining in front of you and has to be late in the day for the sun to be low enough in the sky for the sun to be behind you."

---

4. Climate Change and Rising Sea Levels

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to discussing the effects of climate change, particularly focusing on how rising sea levels threaten coastal regions and major cities.

Key Points:

• Glacial Melting: Melting glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica contribute to increased ocean volumes.
• Sea-Level Rise: Projects the inundation of low-lying areas, including iconic cities like New York and Florida.
• Historical Coastal Stability: Emphasizes that current coastlines have been relatively stable over the past 10,000 years, a period during which human civilization flourished. The rapid climate changes now threaten to redraw these coastlines within decades.
• Impact on Human Settlements: Highlights the vulnerability of major metropolitan areas situated along coastlines, pointing out that “virtually all major cities in the world are on some kind of water line.”

Notable Quotes:

Chuck Nice [42:47]: "If we lose all the glacial ice in Greenland, it'll melt and go into what? The ocean."

Neil deGrasse Tyson [43:17]: "That means there will be no. No more Manhattan."

---

5. Historical Perspectives: Ice Age and Continental Changes

The conversation weaves in historical context, explaining how past climatic events like the Ice Age shaped the current geography of continents and oceanic boundaries.

Key Points:

• Continental Shelves: Underwater extensions of continents that influence current coastal shapes.
• Ice Age Dynamics: During ice ages, colossal amounts of water were trapped in glaciers, which, when melted, significantly raised sea levels.
• Human Migration: Discusses how ancestral human populations traversed land bridges like the Bering Strait during lower sea levels in ice ages.

Notable Quotes:

Chuck Nice [35:00]: "When the oceans were drained, all these coastlines look different, right? They were bigger."

Neil deGrasse Tyson [36:35]: "Ocean. Didn't come from land."

---

6. The Anthropogenic Threat to Stable Coastlines

Concluding the episode, Neil and Chuck underscore the unprecedented pace at which human activities are altering Earth's climate, leading to rising sea levels and the consequent reshaping of coastlines.

Key Points:

• Natural vs. Anthropogenic Changes: Contrasts the gradual natural climatological shifts of the past with the rapid, human-induced changes occurring today.
• Vulnerability of Modern Infrastructure: Warns of the impending loss of critical infrastructure and habitats due to rising waters.
• Call to Awareness: Encourages listeners to recognize the fragility of current coastal systems and the urgent need for climate action.

Notable Quotes:

Neil deGrasse Tyson [47:11]: "Decades, decades, we're looking at maybe changing all of that."

Chuck Nice [45:17]: "We have invited the oceans to join us."

---

7. Final Insights and Reflections

In wrapping up the episode, Neil reflects on the beauty and complexity of Earth's atmospheric and geological systems, while contemplating the long-term consequences of current environmental trends.

Notable Quotes:

Neil deGrasse Tyson [35:05]: "Oh, really?"

Chuck Nice [46:30]: "The water levels have changed over time and they're changing now. And they're going to redraw the map once again."

---

Conclusion

This episode of StarTalk Radio offers an enlightening exploration of twilight and cloud dynamics, seamlessly connecting these phenomena to the broader and more urgent topic of climate change. Through engaging dialogue and expert insights, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice illuminate the science behind the sky we observe and the environmental challenges that threaten our planet's stability.

For those eager to delve deeper into the wonders of the universe and the pressing issues of our time, "Things You Thought You Knew – Head in the Clouds" serves as a compelling listen that blends scientific rigor with accessible conversation.

Keep Looking Up!

Transcript

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[Chuck Nice]

McMuffin with an Iced coffee from somewhere else, now is a great time to reconsider.

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[Chuck Nice]

Hey, star talkians, I've got another things you thought you knew coming your way. This time we're looking at twilight clouds and coastlines, but you gotta check it out to see how they connect and why. See you then. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk be begins right now. Chuck. Yeah. I'm going to tell you about the three twilights.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Uh, no, no, no, no. I'm sorry, I got to correct you on this one. There are four twilights. You got Twilight, then you got New Moon, then you got Eclipse, and then you got Breaking Dawn. I'm afraid that man can bite me any day.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, I'm afraid the answer is incorrect.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, what?

[Chuck Nice]

Astronomically speaking? Oh, scientific. This is a science show.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Astronomical twilight.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's crazy.

[Chuck Nice]

Is a thing. That is an actual thing. So, Chuck, I don't know if you know this, but there's three different kinds of twilight.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Clearly, I did not.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, wait, yes, I do know. So there's the one in the evening, and then there's the one in the morning, and then there's the one where Edward takes my heart.

[Chuck Nice]

No, that's not correct.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, I'm sure. I'm pretty sure it wasn't, but go ahead. What are the three?

[Chuck Nice]

So twilight. In any given place on Earth, we rotate in such a way so that the sun dips below your horizon, unlike some movies and some court cases and some people who think that the instant the sun sets, it's dark.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. Nothing could be more false than that they made this mistake in Back to the Future when Marty goes back to 1955, and he's driving out from the barn because he visited the farmer's Barn in his DeLorean. And it is dark at the beginning of the driveway. And at the end of the driveway, you see sunrise. And it's light. No, no, that's not how that works.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. In John Wick 4, there's this scene that happens early morning hours, and he ascends this staircase up to this plateau. And it's dark. And then the sun rises, and then it's light. Okay. No, no, these people just have never looked up, okay? They think the sun alone, direct sunlight is their only source of light. You know what else is lighting things up? The atmosphere.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

So the sun dips below the horizon. Light is still illuminating the atmosphere above your head.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right?

[Chuck Nice]

It is still glowing from sunlight. That's called twilight. We have a word for that. Twilight.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, it's beautiful.

[Chuck Nice]

It's beautiful.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's gorgeous.

[Chuck Nice]

It's beautiful.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

By the way, if we had no atmosphere and the sun went below the horizon. Dark, dark, dark.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, you know they have that on the moon. Yes, yes.

[Chuck Nice]

That's why all of our astronauts landed in the daytime.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, that's a good. Because otherwise the lights go out like that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so you can ask. The deeper below your horizon the sun goes, the higher and higher up the sunlight is hitting, so the lower atmosphere is more and more in darkness. Okay. If it's really far around the other side, there's no light illuminating any part of the air above you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We call that nighttime. Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Very good.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Just want to let you know I'm with you.

[Chuck Nice]

All right. There are three kinds of twilight. There is civil twilight.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. Hello, I'm Twilight. So terribly nice to meet you. Quite frankly, I don't want to offend you in any way.

[Chuck Nice]

If possible, I saw a comedy skit with civil engineers, right? And they're sitting there offering each other. Would you like some?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Would you care for. Would you care for another pinafore? Oh, my good man, please. I wouldn't. Wouldn't.

[Chuck Nice]

Civil engineers.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Civil engineers.

[Chuck Nice]

If only civil wars could be that polite.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, wouldn't that be something? You know, I would kill you, but that would be rather unpleasant, wouldn't it?

[Chuck Nice]

A civil war.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What's a civil war?

[Chuck Nice]

Let's just play checker.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Exactly.

[Chuck Nice]

A civil twilight is until the sun is six degrees below the horizon.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Six degrees below the. Okay, It's a Kevin Bacon twilight. Gotcha.

[Chuck Nice]

So six degrees.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Six degrees.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. There's still some light in the upper element atmosphere, still lighting. But for practical purposes, for ordinary people, nighttime begins when it's 6 degrees below.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There you go.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Civil twilight.

[Chuck Nice]

Civil twilight. People don't have much need for the sky like other people do. So civil twilight, 6 degrees. Let's keep going. There's another twilight called nautical twilight.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, okay.

[Chuck Nice]

It's gotta be darker than civil twilight for them to use their sextant and their navigate by the stars.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That makes sense.

[Chuck Nice]

It makes sense. So the Sun's gotta be 12 degrees below the horizon.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Look at that.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. And at that point, you start seeing many more stars for you to navigate by.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, where?

[Chuck Nice]

Six degrees, not so much.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. Because there's still light in the earth.

[Chuck Nice]

There's still a lot of light in the atmosphere. Above you, the sky is still glowing blue.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

The blue sky is light from the sun.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Scattered back to you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

On the moon, there is no scattered light. So the sky, daytime sky is as dark as black. Black.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So nautical. Nautical, Civil nautical.

[Chuck Nice]

They get some more stars to play with. Okay. But the astronomers, we go deeper than what the eye can see.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

We bring out telescopes. I don't want twilight messing with my telescopic views of the night sky. So we go an extra 6 degrees lower than nautical twilight.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow.

[Chuck Nice]

18 degrees below the horizon.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Only then is the end of astronomical twilight.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And what time would that be about?

[Chuck Nice]

Well, no. So it depends. If you're near the equator, the angle that the sun sets to the horizon is almost vertical.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

So if you're going vertically down, you're booking into the darkness. Okay. Twilight lights like 15 minutes. I mean, have you been in the Caribbean? There is no culture of twilight in the Caribbean.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's true.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

It's light and then it's dark. Not instantaneously at sunset, but the sun goes down fast. At most an hour. An hour. An hour later is 15 degrees below the horizon. You're done. You're done, you're done.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. But the farther away from the equator you go towards the poles, the sun's angle to the horizon gets shallower and shallower. So here comes the sunset. And how long does it take to get deep below that? Well, it's ambling its way along a hypotenuse. Okay. Along a slopey angle. So twilight could last hours and hours.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Do you know all of England sits north of the northernmost part of Maine?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow. I did not know that.

[Chuck Nice]

Did you know that?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Of course not.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So why would I ever know that?

[Chuck Nice]

So England has very long Twilight.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Very long twilight.

[Chuck Nice]

Very long twilight.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, is that why? Where is it? Where they have like.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, so if you keep going even farther north.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. There is no night. It's all twilight.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It says twilight.

[Chuck Nice]

The sun never gets below your designated level. If it's astronomical twilight, it stays above 18 degrees or above 12 for nautical, above 6. So then my wife is from Alaska. They.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They just Fairbanks.

[Chuck Nice]

The midnight softball game on the solstice. The summer solstice.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, it's just twilight the whole time.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Twilight the whole time.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. So these are your twilights. I don't know how many people know about them. So recite them to me. What are they?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So you got your civil, of course, and then your nautical, and then your astronomical. Or as we're going to call that one, the neolite. Neolite.

[Chuck Nice]

No, it's got to be.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No. You don't like that?

[Chuck Nice]

No.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because it's got your name in it.

[Chuck Nice]

No.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You don't want. No.

[Chuck Nice]

No. So there you have it. Three twilights.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Nice.

[Chuck Nice]

And when we go observing on mountaintops, the we are given the time of astronomical twilight so we can plan our observing schedule around that very co.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Are.

[Advertiser]

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[Chuck Nice]

McMuffin with an Iced coffee from somewhere else, now is a great time to reconsider.

[McDonald's Announcer]

In the Pacific Northwest, it's never too cold for an iced coffee. In the morning. Grab yourself a medium caramel, French vanilla or classic iced coffee for just $2.29.

[Chuck Nice]

Warning.

[McDonald's Announcer]

Beverage may cause craving for McMuffin or hash browns. Prices and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer or combo meal.

[Prolon Announcer]

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[Chuck Nice]

I'm Kais from Bangladesh and I support StarTalk on Patreon.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

This is StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

[Chuck Nice]

Chuck, these don't stop.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, that's fine with me.

[Chuck Nice]

Another explainer.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Excellent.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, this one on clouds. Have we done a clouds one before? Cause you have better memory than I do.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We have not done clouds.

[Chuck Nice]

We have not done clouds.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. And, you know, I wouldn't think there was a lot to talk about with clouds, and maybe that's why we haven't done it.

[Chuck Nice]

But have you looked at clouds from both sides now?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, you mean top and bottom?

[Chuck Nice]

Joni Mitchell. Forgive us. So you ever wonder why clouds are just up there?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I mean, I know. I mean, I haven't wondered. I mean, once I found out the clouds were basically water droplets.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Just basically vapor.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They became extremely uninteresting to me at that point.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, let me re. Let me get you more. Get your interest back going for. Okay. Okay. All right. Allow me to remind you that the sun does not heat the air.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That I understand. The sun heats the ground, and the ground radiates. And that heats the air and that heats the air.

[Chuck Nice]

And it radiates in what band of light?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Infrared.

[Chuck Nice]

Infrared, right. And CO2 in the atmosphere actually traps infrared.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. Oh, God, do I know. What a shame.

[Chuck Nice]

So it's otherwise transparent to sunlight, to ordinary visible light. But once the ground absorbs re. Radiates back infrared, there, you get the trapping, what they call the greenhouse effect.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. Did you hear that, people? That's how simple it is. Did you see how simple that is? Okay. Comes in as visible light and passes through everything with no problem. Heats the ground, ground sends it back as infrared gets trapped. Heats the Earth. Climate change.

[Chuck Nice]

So how do you know the atmosphere is transparent to visible light?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

How do we know?

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I don't know.

[Chuck Nice]

Because you can see the sun.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, that makes sense.

[Chuck Nice]

If it were not transparent.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Transparent?

[Chuck Nice]

You wouldn't see the sun. You wouldn't be able to see the sun.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And there you have it.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Let me be more blunt. Windows are transparent to visible light.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

How do you know this?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because I can see through.

[Chuck Nice]

You can see through them.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Walls are not transparent to visible light.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because I'm not Superman.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so Superman, back then, X rays were, like, relatively new. They X rays were discovered in, like, the first Nobel Prize in physics was given for the discovery of X rays.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. So it was late 1890s, 1900 was the first time that was awarded. So. First Superman comic was maybe 1930s. So X rays are still kind of cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. They're like, woo.

[Chuck Nice]

All right. But radio waves go through walls also.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

So he could have had radio wave.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Vision and then he'd have to tune in his eyes.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so. But back then, X ray was just metaphor for seeing through things.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, Right.

[Chuck Nice]

That's all I want. All right, so infrared does not pass through windows. Not easily.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Not easily, no.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, do this experiment. If you're in a fireplace, right. And you're at some distance from the sign, get someone to walk in front of you with a plate glass window. In that instant, you don't feel any of the radiant heat from the. From the fire.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The heat is. Right. Blocked.

[Chuck Nice]

It blocked. Okay, okay, okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's cool.

[Chuck Nice]

It blocks it. So if you had infrared vision, a window is just the same thing as a wall to you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Just think about that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, so some things are not just inherently transparent. They're only transparent to certain wavelengths of light. All right, so now. And none of that has anything to do with clouds. Okay, but that was still interesting framing information here.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Exactly.

[Chuck Nice]

All right. Sunlight heats the ground. The ground heats the air. The farther away you are from the ground, the less heat you're getting.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That makes sense.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. Have you ever tracked the temperature in an airplane? Sometimes they do it on the track.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. What's the temperature up there? Cold.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Cold.

[Chuck Nice]

Thank you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's the temperature, is it?

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly. Cold.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Very, very cold.

[Chuck Nice]

It's exactly. You measured it exactly. It's cold. Cold.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

It be as low as 40 below, right? Yeah, 40 below zero. And Peggy Lee's fever.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

All right. And that's. We know. We all know that song.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You give me fever in the morning. Right, Right, right.

[Chuck Nice]

So all the occasions where one gets fever.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, Right.

[Chuck Nice]

One of the st stands toward the end is. Now you've listened to my story. Here's the point that I have made. Chicks are born to give you fever, Be it Fahrenheit or centigrade.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ooh.

[Chuck Nice]

Getting both temperature scales.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

In the song.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

In the most sexist way possible. And from a woman. That's how bad it was back then. That's how bad it was back then. Even the women was sexist. Chicks were born to give you fever.

[Chuck Nice]

No, here's why I even went there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Go ahead.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, first of all, I'm giving him a hall pass because Fahrenheit is a human being's name.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Who actually invented the thermometer.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

The mercury Thermometer.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Also American thermometer.

[Chuck Nice]

Centigrade. That's not somebody's name.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. That's a scale.

[Chuck Nice]

So what they should have said was Fahrenheit or Celsius.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. Well, then it wouldn't rhyme.

[Chuck Nice]

Then it wouldn't rhyme. So that's why I gotta give him a hall pass on that one.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. Ask me why I even went there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Why did you even go there?

[Chuck Nice]

Because the Fahrenheit and Celsius scale cross at 40 degrees below zero.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, interesting.

[Chuck Nice]

40 below zero. You only have to say.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You only have to say far. It's the same thing.

[Chuck Nice]

The only temperature for which that is true.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

40 below.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes, it is.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yo, that's kind of that. Right? I'm ready to stop the explainer right now. That is great information. The only temperature that exists, both Fahrenheit and centigrade at the same point is the temperature 40 below zero.

[Chuck Nice]

And. And it's within a degree of the temperature that mercury freezes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Which is especially relevant to mercury thermometers. As you get higher, the temperature drops.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Because you're getting farther away from Earth's surface with where the sun is heating. This reverses in the thermosphere, where ultraviolet is absorbed by the ozone layer. Was any have to do the clouds? Because clouds are formed in warm, moist, unstable air.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

If you're unstable, it means you're not going to stay where you are. You're going to rise, have a pocket of air at sea level or just near the ground. Oh, by the way, the official temperature that gets measured is at a predetermined height above the ground.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Just so it can be standardized.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Otherwise you'd have different temperatures, different temperatures everywhere.

[Chuck Nice]

You're up in a building, you get a different temperature there. Then if you're sleeping on a. On a picnic, a picnic blanket. Right, Right. So they have to standardize that for this reason. All right, so now it's a pocket of air and it has some humidity level in it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, give me a percent. Let's say it's 50% humid.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Not bad. New York City, that's very typical. Deserts, it's down in like single digits.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Rainforest is always up above 80, 90, 80 90s. All right? New York is 50%. That humidity that is reported is actually a relative humidity.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. What that means is that is it is 50% relative to how much it could carry at that temperature. As the blob of air gets heated and rises, the temperature drops colder. Air can hold less humidity than warmer Air.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Mm.

[Chuck Nice]

So the relative humidity goes up.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Gotcha.

[Chuck Nice]

It starts at 50 in this example, it goes to 60, then to 70, then to 80. So let's take 80. At 80%, you didn't add more water to it?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No.

[Chuck Nice]

The capacity of the air to hold, it dropped.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so number one. So there it is. It is ascending 80, 90, bada bing. You reach 100%.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

100% humidity. The. The humidity condenses out as water droplets.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Water vapor, basically. Okay. And boom, you have a cloud. That's why the cloud is up there and not down here.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And now. Now I know how clouds are born.

[Chuck Nice]

That's how clouds are born.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And. And all this time, I thought you had a mommy cloud and a daddy cloud and they loved each other.

[Chuck Nice]

A sports cloud.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's kind of dope, though.

[Chuck Nice]

So. And it's because of this temperature gradient from high temperature to low temperature, from the ground on up.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. There are two ways you won't get clouds, okay? At. No matter your height, there's not enough humidity here.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Where even if it rises, it can go 10, 20, 30, 50, 70. And it never hits 100 before it gets way up in the. No cloud.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No cloud. The other way is the blob of air has autonomy and a right to choose. It doesn't have to have a baby cloud if it doesn't want to.

[Chuck Nice]

Is that where you were going with that? Okay. We were still on the baby making clouds as well.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Sorry, sorry.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. I had moved on from that, but I couldn't. You couldn't. You were still. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The juvenile brain stayed with my childlike brain.

[Chuck Nice]

All right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But that makes sense, because it's really about the water that it's holding, so. And the relative humidity as it's capacity to hold. Capacity to hold.

[Chuck Nice]

To hold humidity.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right?

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so now. So one way is it starts out so low, even though it gets high up, it never hits 100%.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

No cloud gets formed.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Another way is if you have descending air. Ooh, that can happen. So you can have, for example, cold air moving through the mountains. And cold air is. And then it comes into a valley and it descends. It comes down over the mountaintops. Okay. If you have descending air, what's happening to the air? The air temperature?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, it's getting warmer. It's getting warmer, so. And then condensation again.

[Chuck Nice]

It can now keep holding more and more moisture. You're not making clouds. Right. So descending air does not make clouds because it keeps getting warmer.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Ascending air with not enough moisture will not Make a cloud because it'll never get to 100%.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. Okay. All right, so far, this is cool.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, you ready? Okay, so now suppose there's no wind and you got, like, let's say 70% humidity.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right?

[Chuck Nice]

The sun sets and the temperature drops. Gets to 100%. What happens? What just happened?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We made a cloud.

[Chuck Nice]

Where? Where. Where do we make the cloud?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Where the air is. I mean, thank you, Chuck, for that.

[Chuck Nice]

Brilliant answer right in front of me. Yeah, of course.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It would be right here.

[Chuck Nice]

Right here. Y. We have a new word for that kind of cloud.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Do we really?

[Chuck Nice]

Yes. What? Fog.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You got me. It's fog. That's fog, and that's the cloud.

[Chuck Nice]

That's why when it's foggy, it's always a little cold. Yes. You ever noticed that?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah. It's a little cold, a little chilly.

[Chuck Nice]

And it's a little dank. Little chilly. So the fog is. When you get this, you reach. It's called a dew point, to be precise. The dew point. And it's right at the ground level.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Nice.

[Chuck Nice]

And so it's interesting that in our language you have a different word for a cloud above your head than for the same damn cloud right here, right in front of you. If the cloud formation is vigorous, like the temperature dropped real fast and it was really humid, and it comes up there and it's still being unstable and it's rising and it's turning into water droplets, you get a cumulus cloud.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, okay.

[Chuck Nice]

If this is intense and it's unrelenting and it continues to build that cumulus cloud, which is just white with sunlight moving through it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

It becomes less white.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Because the droplets are getting bigger and bigger. Oh, okay. And starts getting gray.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Nice.

[Chuck Nice]

We have a gray cumulus cloud. You get cumulonimbus.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

That stuff hurt you. So in a cumulonimbus now, the water droplets are so. It is so laden with water, it cannot contain the humidity even at 100%. And so the humidity nucleates. It finds droplet dust in the air, things it says, and other bits of water vapor collect to it. And it's held there for a while because you have updrafts, because that's how you made the cloud in the first place.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

But then it gets so big, it drops out. So the more vigorous the cloud is, the heavier the raindrops are because it was holding them up. Right, okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, right, right.

[Chuck Nice]

Very fast moving air is holding it up until it can't hold it up anymore. And that big fat ass Drop falls out of the sky and you get the big drop. Thunderstorms.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Nice.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, now let's say it's even more vigorous than that. Oh, okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We went from cumulus nimbus to cumulus negro. That's when the clouds get black.

[Chuck Nice]

Clouds.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They get black.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so. So the updrafts are so severe.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. Oh, I forgot to tell you. Often the rain forms as snow, as water crystals. Cause it's high up.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. Right. Very cold, and you can keep those pretty buoyant. But then as it begins to fall, it gets to a warmer air temperature and it just melts into rain.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. So all right, now imagine updraft so strong that not even the raindrops can fall out. And it just stays up there. The thing freezes and gets bigger and bigger. And then one day, I can't hold you anymore. I got to let you go. And now too big to melt.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, my God.

[Chuck Nice]

And what do you get?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You got hail.

[Chuck Nice]

Hail.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's terrible.

[Chuck Nice]

You got hail. It's all because of the updrafts.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right? That's updraft. That's an insurance cloud.

[Chuck Nice]

So the conclusion here is the bigger the hail, that means the bigger the hail.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Pellets.

[Chuck Nice]

Pellets, Spheres. The more severe the storm was.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Because it meant the updrafts were just so significant, it was so catastrophic. Turning just moist air into giant balls of ice. Giant balls of ice, that's right. Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Go on.

[Chuck Nice]

By the way, with these puffy clouds, it's why they're more frequent in the tropics, because you still have the ground heating, but you start out with such higher humidity air that when it rises, of course you're going to puff up a cloud, like right there. Now, if you pop off a cloud here and not over there, then it could be raining over there and not over here.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right? Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. And this is the conditions. Almost all the conditions you need for a rainbow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. So to have a rainbow, you know, it's very specific. I don't know if you knew this. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

So it's gotta be raining in front of you and has to be late in the. Late enough in the day for the sun to be low enough in the sky for the sun to be behind you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That makes sense.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So it can create the.

[Chuck Nice]

It would be a late afternoon thunderstorm.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

That's over there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. The sun is yonder and it's behind.

[Chuck Nice]

You and the sun is behind you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. That's why you never see a rainbow in the middle of the day because.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The sun is directly overhead.

[Chuck Nice]

Right. And it's not raining under your knees.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, right.

[Chuck Nice]

You would if in a. In a sprinkler.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Lawn sprinkler.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But if you're in a plane looking down.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes. If you're a plane looking down, you. You got full view. Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Awesome.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. You got it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's great.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. So. So these are the configurations here. And there are other kinds of clouds. Like I said, cirrus clouds are. They can be transparent, but they mess with our viewing of the night sky.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Little wispy things.

[Chuck Nice]

Right, right. And these are clouds that just hang out up there, and they're just. They're very stable cirrus clouds. And then you have weather fronts that come in where there's a change in temperature. You never heard of a warm front coming in, bringing bad weather. Right. That's not how that works.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Always a cold front, because if things.

[Chuck Nice]

Get warmer, you're going to hold more moisture.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

More moisture.

[Chuck Nice]

It's when the cold front comes in.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. The cold front comes in, messing up everything.

[Chuck Nice]

And you had warm air that had moisture, and they meet at the boundary. It turns your moisture into rain, into storms, into clouds. And so it's always the cold front you got to watch out for.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's the drunk uncle at the cookout. The cold front just messing things up.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, so just one other interesting thing, I think, okay. These are especially visible in airplanes. You see these long. I'll call them columns, but they're horizontal columns of clouds.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

One after another.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

These are called cloud streets.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Cloud streets.

[Chuck Nice]

Streets.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Cloud streets. Okay. Because the clouds that I just described, the air goes up. But wait a minute. If air is going up, what's replacing that air?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Gotta be more air.

[Chuck Nice]

Thank you, Chuck. That. Brilliant answer. Okay, so for every bit of air that goes up, there's air that drops down and comes in to fill the gap. So these are convective cells. It's. Okay, that's what's happening here. But in a cloud street, the convective cell is cylindrical.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Interesting.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so imagine a horizontal cylinder that's rotating.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, nice.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. On the side that's rotating up, you get cloud formation. And on the side that's rotating down, no clouds form.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Because it's going. It's downward air. We've been through that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. And so. But wait a minute. How about the other cylinder? It has to be turning the opposite way, otherwise they would cancel.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

You can have up air and down air simultaneously in the same place. So these cloud Streets have cylinders rolling with sides that match each other. Both going down or both going up.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh.

[Chuck Nice]

So the next time you're in an airplane, look for this. It's beautiful and it can go on for miles and miles.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Nice.

[Chuck Nice]

And so again, depending on how the terrain is heated, where the moisture is, is there a lake, is there an ocean, is there a. Is there asphalt which gets heats higher, hotter than other. So all of this makes for the beautiful diversity of clouds we see and love in the sky.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's very cool. And, and, and to think that all we ever do is look at them and see bunny rabbits and deer and George Washington and. Right. Always George Washington. Well, he's got the, he's got the president.

[Chuck Nice]

He's got the, you know, he's got to do for it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's true.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

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[Chuck Nice]

To check yes. Asking me about coastlines.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What's going on with coastlines? Thank you.

[Chuck Nice]

I thought you never asked. Yeah, well, we're in my office here, so nothing is ever farther than an arm's reach, right? For whatever I gotta use okay, so I'm just reaching right here and. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And look at that.

[Chuck Nice]

I got the whole word.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There you go. In his hands.

[Chuck Nice]

Did anyone sing that anymore? I bet they don't.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No.

[Chuck Nice]

No, because that was so Kumbaya. United Nations.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That was like. Bring it all together.

[Chuck Nice]

Bring it all together. Hippie love coming Hippie love nae more days are gone. All right, anyhow, so here's the Earth. When we think of Earth, we say to ourselves, there are bodies of water, oceans are the largest, and there's land. And we see this and we think about it as though it's a fundamental feature of our planet. That's Africa, because it has that shape. Here's Asia with this coastline, and Japan is an island. We have this understanding of the world brought to you by settlers and explorers and politicians. With a few wars thrown in here and there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You always gotta have a war. A good war to bring about changes geography.

[Chuck Nice]

It's also color coded.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Which I came to realize in my cynical adulthood are ways so that you can learn early on who your friends are and who your enemies are. Because none of this is visible from space.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, it isn't.

[Chuck Nice]

No, it's just land.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's just land.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, Right. All right. So when you take a look at a coastline, there's the urge to think there's something fundamental about it, but there isn't.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, really?

[Chuck Nice]

That's just the coastline today.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That makes sense.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, Right. Have you seen maps where you can look through the ocean, through the water in North America, for example. Here we go. Have you ever seen maps where you can see that the continent extends a little further out underwater? Have you ever noticed that? You know what they call it?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No.

[Chuck Nice]

The continental shelf.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, yeah, that, that. I've seen that.

[Chuck Nice]

You've seen that? Yes. And so it kind of follows our contour, but it's way, way out there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Exactly.

[Chuck Nice]

And in fact, a lot of trash dumping activity in the old days. Now you, you, you process the trash, Right? The old days, they would put on a barge and go beyond the continental shelf, dump, dump it there. So it goes way down to the bottom.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Rather than possibly ever washing back up. Okay. And I remember looking at it as a kid, and I said, why does the shape of our continent continue underwater? I didn't understand that. Oh, because it's intriguing to me that, that. Okay. Do you know what that other edge is underwater? That's the coastline of North America when the ocean had less water in it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

When the oceans were drained.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Get used to that, people.

[Chuck Nice]

Get Used to that. Wait, hold on. When the oceans were drained, all these coastlines look different, right? They were bigger.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They were bigger.

[Chuck Nice]

They were bigger.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

And so. Well, when was where the oceans drained? During the Ice Age.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

You know how ice ages work? You still have your oceans and you still have evaporation. Because where does water come from that falls out of the sky? It used to be in the ocean.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ocean.

[Chuck Nice]

Ocean. Didn't come from land.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, of course not.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. Came from oceans and other bodies of water. All right, so the water evaporates up, but Earth is really, really, really cold. So it goes into the cloud, and then the cloud goes over land, and it doesn't rain.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It snows and deposits that water as snowflakes.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so the snow is there. Does the snow ever make it back to the ocean?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No. There we go.

[Chuck Nice]

It stays there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Stays there.

[Chuck Nice]

And then another snowfall comes and another.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Layer'S on top, and there's a feet.

[Chuck Nice]

And then yards and in some cases, miles.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. By the way, this is a great opportunity to take the time and explain to people. That's how we know that climate change is real and that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is greater today than it was back then. For all you people who say, oh, it's just cyclical. It's not a big deal. That's how we know from what Neil just described, because in each one of those layers, we can count the carbon dioxide.

[Chuck Nice]

A public service message was brought to.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You, so stop it. It's real. Okay. Anyway, go ahead.

[Chuck Nice]

What happens is, once the oceans evaporate out and it snows on land, by the way, it'll also snow in the ocean, and then, okay, it'll just turn into water again. Water. All right, so that's just fine. But for every snowflake that lands, that goes to land and never melts, Right. You have systematically drained water from the oceans, and if this goes on for thousands of years, you then build these layers of snow to make a new form of ice, which is glacial ice. It's not snow and it's not ice in your freezer. It's a different form of matter for the water molecule, glacial ice. It's basically compactified snow. All right? It just stays there. It stays there. Frozen. All right, so you are draining the ocean. And as you drain the ocean. Oh, my gosh. What happened? Oh, back here where Alaska and Asia meets with the Bering Strait, our ancestors walked over. Oh, they didn't take a boat.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What?

[Chuck Nice]

They didn't fly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What you doing Tuesday? Let's take A walk. Go for a walk.

[Chuck Nice]

So there they were in Asia, and there was a land and settlements there. We've come to learn they crossed into North America after having risen up out of Africa.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Risen up in terms of longitude, latitude. Here, up out of Africa into Europe. Others went into Asia. Some stayed low, others went high. They get to that boundary, they cross over, and they settle. North America, Central America and South America. Then the Ice age ends.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. Oh, my God, we're so trapped.

[Advertiser]

What happened to the land bridge?

[Chuck Nice]

Well, no, that's long forgotten.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. It happens kind of slow, Right. And then it covers over. All right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Many generations.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, so what? Yes, but you are correct. With the water levels rising, changing, all the coastlines has now stranded a branch has now stranded a branch of the human species into North Central and South America. So we strand a branch of the human species into north and South America, and the water levels begin to rise. But at that time, the coastline of the Americas was that continental shelf.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Now imagine if people started building cities on that continental shelf. Ooh, they'd all be gone today.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What a shame.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so what happens is the ice age ends. And the end of the ice age is a mixture of. Of warmth and cold where the cold has retained glaciers for tens of thousands of years. Up here in Greenland, and of course, down here, Antarctica. Antarctica. And so that period is relatively stable. Yes. We have some storms and things. Yes. But we have sustained one of the most climactically peaceful periods in recent Earth history. 10,000 years of relatively stable climate, post ice age. And when you're relatively stable, you say, oh, well, where is the coastline? Here is the coastline. Let's put New York there or New Amsterdam. Why? Because it's on a river. You can have irrigation, you have transportation, you have. What else do you use?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Commerce. Commerce.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, business. All right. So the coastline of all the world's nations today reflect 10,000 years of stable climate. The glacier stayed glaciers in the cold parts, and other glaciers that had melted had filled up the oceans. It's been stasis, relative stasis. We are now warming Earth beyond that period of time.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yep.

[Chuck Nice]

And so the glaciers that are still there that were in kind of equilibrium with us as we built civilization. And by the way, where are all major cities in the world?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They're on the water's edge on the.

[Chuck Nice]

Coastline, practically, except for Denver. Right. Practically. Every major city in the world famous historical city is on some kind of water line.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's right, Yep.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so now we are warming the Earth. The glacial Ice on Greenland. Let's find Greenland right there. And the glacial ice on Antarctica, you say, oh, Greenland's not all that big. And Antarctica's not.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, what are you worried about? Big deal.

[Chuck Nice]

If we lose all the glacial ice in Greenland, right. It'll melt and go into what?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The ocean.

[Chuck Nice]

The ocean. We melt it on Antarctica. Ocean goes into the ocean.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's right.

[Chuck Nice]

Raising the sea level.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Rising sea level.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. If we lose all that glacial ice, the oceans will rise. Now, the Statue of Liberty is actually on a huge pedestal, right? I don't know if you knew that. It's huge. Almost as big as the bottom of the statue. At the bottom of the statue.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. No, that's what she sits on. That's what raises up out of the bay.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

So the water levels will rise so high that it'll reach her left elbow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's crazy. That means there will be no. No more Manhattan.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You lose New York, New York, you lose. You lose.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All of North Jersey, you lose. Not that anybody cares. Let's be honest, no one ever.

[Chuck Nice]

We lose New York and we lose North Jersey, too. Said no one ever in the history of climate conversation.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Who invited this guy? The dude from Jersey.

[Chuck Nice]

But my mama lives in North Jersey, so you lose all of that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

And it's a different coastline.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It is.

[Chuck Nice]

It's a coastline.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Once again, without Florida. There you go. Oh. So there's one good thing to climb.

[Chuck Nice]

No, stop, stop, stop. We gotta protect all our 50 states. So I think the average elevation of Florida is six feet.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, forget it. Say goodbye, Florida.

[Chuck Nice]

You know, Florida has the lowest, highest elevation of all 50 states.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow. Right?

[Chuck Nice]

Can you follow that sentence?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That makes sense, because New Orleans is, like, below sea level. So Florida has the lowest highest elevation.

[Chuck Nice]

No, no. But in Louisiana, their highest elevation is way higher than the highest elevation of Florida.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. That's.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

No, you can have places with low elevation. I'm talking about the average.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The average.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. So.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, six feet would do it. Six feet.

[Chuck Nice]

If you start with six feet, you ain't got nothing.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Exactly. It's like. Yeah. So basically, your elevation is. Chuck. Pl an inch. You in a lot of. You in a lot of trouble, man.

[Chuck Nice]

If you fly over, there's some satellite shots over Florida. And with the sun in the right angle, at the correct angle, you see these reflections off of these bodies of water throughout Florida, Right? So of course there's the Okeechobee Lake, which is the big one right there in the middle. But you look around, it's like body of water. Body of water. Body water. Water. So the, it's like the water is already ready to take over.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, it's like we're just, we're waiting.

[Chuck Nice]

One day we will all join with one another.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Bide your time, fellas. Our time is at hand.

[Chuck Nice]

We have invited the oceans to join us.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Exactly. The oceans are on board. All we need now is time and they're resolved not to do anything.

[Chuck Nice]

They're human stupidity.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's it.

[Chuck Nice]

So that's a whole other coastline.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Look at that.

[Chuck Nice]

So that's a whole other coastline.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Of the future.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Look at that.

[Chuck Nice]

And so now you're going to look down on Earth and there's no, there's nothing inherent about the existence of Florida on Earth's surface. That's my point. And there you go. And there are other parts we'll lose a lot of. In northern Canada there's a lot of sort of low, low lying lands. Almost all of the South Pacific island nations are gone. Right. They also have very low elevations.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Vacations in now get your vacation.

[Chuck Nice]

Florida. As we said, we lose Florida. The Florida Keys in fact have even a lower elevation than Florida itself. So they're gone. And can. It's gone. We're gonna lose Ken.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right?

[Chuck Nice]

I think he hung out at the Florida Keys.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, exactly.

[Chuck Nice]

You know, so. So anyhow, I just want to impress upon you that when we think of Earth, there's nothing inherent about the existence of land poking up above the existence of water.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

The water levels have changed over time and they're changing now. And they're going to redraw the map once again.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Cool. And not cool. Like it's a great novel thing to know and consider, but it's also terrifying that we. The difference is that was a natural engineering of coastlines that you explained before. That's a natural engineering of coastlines. What we have now is a anthropomorphic engineering.

[Chuck Nice]

Right. And in fact, like I said, we grew civilization on a stable climate and a stable coastline.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

And that took thousands of years before that to get to that point and stabilize out. And now on a timescale of decades.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Decades, decades, we're looking at maybe changing all of that.

[Chuck Nice]

All of that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, there you have it. That is all right. So I don't mean to bum. You know, I'm just saying sad right now.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm so sad.

[Chuck Nice]

In fact, one last thing. This is neither here nor there. When we talk about how much water is on a body, the way geologists refer to it is. How deep is the water? If the water was the same depth everywhere on its surface, it's just a way to think about how much water is there. Right, right. So if you take the water and spread it smoothly, like icing on a cake. And so no, it's not filling in the low parts or trickling off the high parts, just having to go everywhere, how much would it be? So you can say, well, how much water did Mars have? If you give an answer, it'll be in those terms. It would have 50ft of water, 1,000ft of water or 10ft of water. You'll just do this, conduct this exercise. When you do it, you learn things like Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, which is frozen on the outside and liquid underneath. You add up that liquid is more liquid than all the oceans on Earth.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow.

[Chuck Nice]

And since all our evidence tells us life began in the oceans, that's why we can't wait to get our hands on that ocean to see if there's any life forms. Yeah. On Europa, which we would have to then call them Europeans. Europeans, right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because that's life on Europa, what you want to do. Or we could just call them, you know, space white people.

[Chuck Nice]

What?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They're Europeans.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, if they're Europeans.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Don'T. They're jokes. They're jokes people. Stop it.

[Chuck Nice]

So that's it, Chuck. That's yet another star talk explainer delivered to you from the cosmic crib. Yeah. At the American Museum of Natural History, Hayden Planetarium, Neil Degrasse Tyson here as always. Keep looking up.

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